On behalf of the organisers we send you the following call for papers.
Call for Papers. Compilations and excerpt collections of historiographical
material: A workshop.
Ghent University, 24-25 March 2016
Compilations and excerpt collections are a common genre in late antique and
medieval literature. Practices of excerpting have often been situated in
the context of tenth-century ‘encyclopaedism’ (P. Lemerle, A. Dain), but
that image may be misleading. The practice of gathering and excerpting
starts much earlier than the 10th century and ‘encyclopaedism’ is a modern
term that may distort our understanding of ‘culture of *sylloge’* (P.
Odorico). For a long time, compilations and collections only received
attention as sources for the works they rely on and not as works of
literature in their own right. Recently, scholars have suggested to take
them seriously as a literary phenomenon and study them as texts in their
own right. This workshop adopts this perspective by focusing on
historiographical texts.
We are in particular interested in the following aspects of the compilation
and collection:
a. The workshop will aim at tracing the origins of the practice of
‘copying and pasting’. Are excerpt collections and compilations a typically
medieval phenomenon or do they have a classical ancestry, possibly now
hidden from sight?
b. The workshop will focus on the format, working methods and formal
characteristics of compilations and collections: Are they stable entities
or can they be considered as ‘living texts’ that are changed in
transmission? What is the relationship, if any, between compilations (such
as Cassiodorus’ *Historia Tripertita*) and excerpt collections? To what
extent was the selection of excerptors influenced by contemporary cultural
and political ideas?
c. The workshop will aim at exploring the role played by specific
social contexts in the practices of organising historical material. What
view on history do they presuppose? What do compilations and collections
teach us about their author, patron, and intention? What conception of
knowledge do compilations and collections presuppose? Do they aim at
structuring and providing complete, exhaustive knowledge?
The workshop will focus primarily on the study of historiographical
collections and compilations produced between Late Antiquity and the
twelfth century, composed in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, and
other languages. We welcome papers dealing with specific collections and
compilations, as well as more general contributions and comparative studies.
Scholars who wish to attend the workshop can send their proposal to both
Emerance Delacenserie (Emerance.Delacenserie@xxxxxxxx) and Panagiotis
Manafis (Panagiotis.Manafis@xxxxxxxx), before July 1, 2015. Participants
should submit a title and a 500 words abstract. Each paper will last
approximately 25 minutes and will be followed by a discussion. The
available languages for both the abstracts and lectures are English,
French, German, and Italian.
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